Late on Ash Wednesday afternoon, I found myself at home all alone. As I came in the door, I dropped the mail on the counter. I put the dog outside. I turned on some lights and mindlessly clicked on the television as I started to look through the mail. The TV came on tuned to a program on ESPN, the cable all-sports channel. At some point I looked up and realized that one of the anchor people there on the sports talk program had ashes on his forehead from what must have been an earlier visit to church. No one said anything about it though I imagine the make-up person must have tried to fix it. There must have been someone off camera who tried to convince him to wash his face before the show. As I sat there I wasn’t really thinking of any faith statement or bold witness. I wasn’t trying to imagine the intent, the motivation that might have been coming from the television sports guy. I found myself struck by the jarring combination of symbols. ESPN and ashes. ESPN. “The world leader” they call themselves in their advertising. An icon of sports and entertainment and success and victory and highlight videos. A symbol of the culture itself. And ashes: a ritual that marks religious discipline, penitence, repentance, humility, mortality, an inward turn, even a turn away from the world, bowing before God. A mark that begins a forty day walk with Jesus toward the cross. A symbol of Lent. ESPN and ashes. Talk about a clash of symbols. A symbol of culture. A symbol of discipleship.
     Discipleship. That is the theme of our preaching life this season of Lent. We are reflecting together on our life in Christ, our life with God. Discipline. Penitence. Repentance. Humility. Salvation in the face of our mortality. The inward turn, as it were. This morning’s biblical text comes from Paul’s Letter to the Church at Philippi. The Book of Philippians. It’s good book for Lent. A lot of verses you could underline. A lot from Paul worthy of your devotion, your memorizing for Lent. “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.” “Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ....I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” That sounds like Lent.
     “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Philippians and Lent. The journey with Jesus. The giving up of self in service to Christ. The focus on the Cross. The attention to Christ and his sacrifice. The letter describes an intimate encounter with Christ.
     Notice the first person pronouns, “I, I, I” As in “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” It’s very Lenten; me and Jesus. If you want Paul on community. That’s First Corinthians. Paul on reconciliation with others. That’s Ephesians. Paul on our unity in Christ. That’s Galatians. But when it comes to Lent and that inward turn, Philippians makes good sense. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” Philippians 4:13.
     The comfort of Lent. Paul. Philippians. The comfort of Lent. It’s almost an oxymoron. With the connotations of discipline and sacrifice and giving up things and blocking out the world’s distractions and attending to things spiritual, if only for a season. The comfort of Lent refers to finding rest again in a piety that allows you and Jesus, your relationship to God to come to the center. The comfort of Lent allows you to focus again on the “I” or the “me”, even as you focus on God in relation to “I” and “Me.” The comfort of Lent moves you to be thankful for another chance to get right with God. The reorientation. The fresh direction. The focus on self, it feels good. And you and I, we kick off your shoes and stretch and lean back for one more season of Lent.
     Just about then, just in the middle of the stretch, right as the yawn comes into the walk of faith, just when Paul in Philippians has provided you with enough devotional material to spark your religious imagination, the tingling about you and Jesus, just then, Paul shatters the comfort of Lent. Paul shatters the comfort of Lent with the text for the morning that I read to you. The text that falls smack in the middle between “pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” and “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice.” Right there, right here Paul takes on the individualism that so often comes with Lent. Paul turns off the spotlight on the self. He stops the highlight reel of spiritual discipline. Paul turns his pronoun to the plural, to the “our”. Paul introduces his own clash of symbols (the god of the belly and our citizenship in heaven). The comfort of Lent crumbles right when you get to “the but....” of Paul’s argument. “But our citizenship is in heaven!”
     I have told you before, and I will tell you again, Paul pleads, that many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Destruction is their end. They worship only that which fills them up, that which pleases them, that which meets their every longing and desire. The glory, the success, the victory they claim is really to their shame. Their minds are set on earthly things, the things of this world. But...but.....but our citizenship, our commonwealth, our homeland, is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting, we look to, we await, we long for, a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
     Our commonwealth. Our community. Our identity. Our life together. The “our” part, this colony of heaven, it is defined by, modeled after, and points to the Lord Jesus Christ, and him alone. Lent isn’t just about looking inward. It’s about looking around, around at one another, and our identity here as the very household of God. Called to live as the household of God when surrounded by such earthly things. Maybe Lent is all about a clash of symbols; not ashes and ESPN, but the commonwealth of heaven and the gods of this world. A clash of symbols. A clash of kingdoms. Not much comfort there!
     In their book Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon write about the church as “an island of one culture in the middle of another.” They suggest that at our baptism our citizenship is transferred from one kingdom to the other. That we are resident aliens in a foreign land who have been called by God to be the community of faith, the body of Christ, the church. The church is an outpost of the very commonweath of heaven. An outpost where we pass on faith, and hand on values and commit to a way life. A life together that comes with even a great purpose than companionship. We don’t just keep each other from “bowling alone”. For the church, in all that we do and say, we look to the Lord Jesus Christ. Or as the author’s put it rather well, “Christian community life, life in the colony, is not primarily about togetherness. It is about the way of Jesus Christ with those whom he calls to himself.”
     There is an “our” part to Lent, and “our” part to discipleship. It is found in the “but...” of Paul’s rhetoric in Philippians. It is a fresh and re-examined commitment to life together as the body of Christ. A life together that comes with a clear purpose in Christ. That book, Residnt Aliens, it is almost twenty years old now. Every time I read it I find myself wrestling with the authors, not fully convinced by their arguments or by their examples or by their solutions. But I taken by their lament for the church, for a church that simply accommodates to the culture. A church, that in their words, is just “so intent on running errands for the world.”
     On Tuesday The Princeton Packet had an article that caught my eye. The headline read “And I Now I Pronounce You”. The author tells of a lawyer friend who went on-line to be ordained in order to be able to officiate at the wedding of a college friend’s daughter. The lawyer enjoys bringing people together and serving those who experience discomfort or dissension with religious-specific scripts in ceremonies. The self-described niche is to serve interfaith couples who may find themselves otherwise shut out from the rituals of faith communities.
     I must admit I am still working through my own reaction to the article that so casually reduced my life’s work to the click of a mouse. But more troubling was a view of the clergy, and by extension the church, a view that defined our purpose as simply performing rituals for a world that has no idea when it comes to the purpose for which God has called us together. As the lawyer himself defined it, I “immediately set out to become a legally ordained minister who could perform weddings, funerals, baptisms and other functions of the clergy.” It sounds like running errands to me.
     I came this close to writing a letter to the editor. But words won’t matter. An argument isn’t helpful. We’re just going to have to show them! On Thursday I was invited to read “The Cat in the Hat” downstairs at the Mary Dietrich Nursery School in honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday. I was only a few pages in, using my best preacher’s voice and all the emotion I could muster, when a little 4 year old girl stopped me and said, “Hey, how come you’re not showing us the pictures.” She was right, of course. And from that moment, I did show the pictures on every page.
     But our citizenship is in heaven. Paul. Philippians. Lent. It’s not always an inward turn. The world just won’t understand. The citizenship in heaven part. So, you and I, we’re going to have to show them. Show them a life together that builds fellowship not for the sake of community, but for the sake of Christ who calls us. Show them a gathering of folks committed to one another not because we agree about everything but because our unity is in Christ and our prior commitment is to him and to him alone. Show them a church, a collection of those who gather week in and week out, not simply to get something out, to be consumers of piety and religion and packaged spirituality, but people who come together because Christ bids us come and Christ teaches us that before it is about us, it is about him, and before it is about us, it is about the other, and before it is about us, it is about our service to the world.
     Show them a community of faith who gives of their resources, not to preserve and institution, not out of guilt, not like some kind of membership dues, but because everything we have is a gift from God, and God has entrusted us with vision for ministry in this place and at this time that demands a joyful response and the sharing of our wealth. Show them a church that is willing to work for justice, and take some risks with its voice, and is willing to think about faith engaged in every issue, for no other reason than that we know ourselves to be the hands and the feet of Christ in the world.
     Show them a feeble gathering of folks whose boundary for their life together is nothing other than the love of God, where membership comes not by right, or privilege, or legacy, or wealth, or political position, but simply by confessing Jesus as Lord.
     Show them a church that isn’t just about running errands for the world, but a church, where the children of God gather and serve and worship and grow and together, point to, look for, long for, a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
     For....our citizenship is in heaven.

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